Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 4, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
US Internet corporation Google is said to be interested in acquiring the online telephone service Skype. This emerges from a report by industry service Techcrunch, citing informed company sources. The service, which belongs to online auction house eBay, is already the subject of negotiations with Google. Aside from a possible complete acquisition, eBay’s leadership could also envisage cooperation with the search engine provider. “Linking Google’s services with Skype would be enormously exciting. Of course, Skype’s existing customer base holds tempting potential, offering what is probably Google’s greatest incentive on the one hand and Skype’s greatest trump card on the other,” says branding expert Markus Hübner, managing director of Brandflow http://www.brandflow.at, in an interview with pressetext.
After eBay acquired Skype in 2005, industry experts questioned the sense behind the deal. Given that the auction platform provider otherwise has no projects in the telecommunications industry, Google, by contrast, could benefit all the more from Skype. Particularly in view of the Internet corporation’s ambitions to enter the mobile business, Skype offers interesting possibilities, the expert says.
The VoIP service allows calls to landlines and mobile phones worldwide. Google came away empty-handed from the recent auction of US mobile frequencies. “The Android platform was Google’s first step towards mobile communications. But the concept did not make as monumental an impact as hoped. The strong position of major competitors such as Apple in this field also contributed to that,” Hübner explains in the pressetext interview.
On the other side, eBay has made many mistakes since acquiring Skype. “The basis for building and integrating new services would have been there, but eBay failed to take advantage of it. As a result, the integration and further development of the services remained relatively stagnant,” the expert says. In its portfolio and development of B2B services, stronger community services and consumer-to-consumer offerings, eBay is lagging behind through its own fault. “Failing to drive forward the integration of Skype into eBay itself represents the company’s greatest mistake,” Hübner stresses.
In the event of a complete takeover of Skype, a purchase price of between four and six billion dollars is reportedly being negotiated in the talks. Almost three years ago, eBay paid a transaction sum of around 4.1 billion dollars. The telephone service’s market value has not risen since then, however. In October of last year, eBay had to write down Skype by 1.4 billion dollars, which also contributed to a change at the top. It is currently still unclear what a Skype takeover would mean for the comparable, already available Google Talk service, which has significantly lower usage.
